On June 30, Microsoft will quit Windows XP in an effort to coerce all PC users onto Windows Vista. As this date catchs closer and closer, they have mulishly asserted that they will not exchange their plans.
Last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer blinked , but in a rather perplexing way:
- The sensitive part: Ballmer laid claim that they might reconsider their decision if that’s what customers desired.
- The discombobulating part: Ballmer seemed to be completely unknowledgeable of the multitudes of people in public begging for XP to catch a stay of execution.
Scarce desire kind of customer feedback would Ballmer be capable to try?
It’s genuinely not that difficult to feel overpowering evidence of magnanimous numbers of people who desire to carry on utilizing XP. A uncomplicated Google search for the string “make unnecessary windows XP ” ensues in over 200 thousand hits.
Oh yea, I blanked out — Steve plausibly doesn’t use Google. Perhaps the problem is that he simply can’t discover any XP fans on the Internets? 
Or possibly Ballmer is complying the nowadays stylish trend of calculating an Internet person as merely 3/5 of a existent person?
- Sure as shooting, Ron Paul has lots of fanatic supporters, but they’re by and large simply people on the Internet, and they don’t really count.
- Sure, Barack Obama has raised truckloads of money, but he mostly gets it from people on the Internet, and they don’t really count.
- Sure, over 170 thousand people have signed the Save Windows XP petition , but those people are on the Internet, so they don’t really count.
Or maybe this is simply the most arrogant corporate decision in history? Maybe Steve can hear all of these desperate cries but he simply doesn’t care.
Power corrupts. Every monstrously large organization eventually turns into, well, a monster. The next step is for all these organizations to start borrowing each other’s tactics. Hey Steve, why not start waterboarding everybody who wwon’t switch to Windows Vista? Apparently it’s legal.
The whole situation is most annoying to those of us who are running small software companies. Unlike Microsoft, we actually have to listen to our customers. When they tell us to jump, we ask how high.
Microsoft is telling millions of its customers to jump. Out of principle, I am doing my best not to comply:
- I’m typing this blog entry on Windows XP.
- That instance of Windows XP is actually a VMware image running on my Mac. I started using a MacBook Pro with Leopard a couple months ago. And I love it.
- I just donated fifty bucks to the ReactOS project. I’m figuring that in the long run, I’ve got a better chance of getting Windows XP from ReactOS than from Redmond.
Some of my readers are horrified at this blog entry. “But Eric, aren’t you a.NET developer?”
Yes, I am. My overall posture toward Microsoft is still friendly. I still use Windows every day. I still love Visual Studio. C# is still my favorite language ever. Heck, I’m even a big WPF fan, so I’d actually prefer to see the world switch to Vista. I’ve used Vista, and while I didn’t find it to be a compelling “must-have” upgrade, I rather liked it.
But none of this means that I’m going to give my blanket agreement to every decision Microsoft makes. In this case, I object to Microsoft’s plan, not because Vista is so awful, but rather, because ignoring customers is so wrong.
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